I've been reading around and i was wondering which is the newest arduino board. I heard the uno is but then i heard that the mega is. Also is there a standard between the boards so shields made for the uno will work with the mega and vice versa? Thanks.
The Uno and mega2560 were released at about the same time. Uno SMD a little later. Both are compatible with most sheilds. Only compatiblity problem I'm aware from mega type boards (1280 or 2560 based) and the 168/328 based boards is that the physical pins for supporting I2C communications aren't on analog inputs pin 4 and 5 for mega boards, so any sheild using I2C communications would have to be physically modified to work with any mega board.
Lefty
The SPI pins are on a different place as well.
bubulindo:
The SPI pins are on a different place as well.
Right you are, I had forgotten SPI and that is even though I had written a SPI program for an external DAC module and had to put pin information is the starting comments so it would work with either type board.
// Continous ramping from 0-5vdc analog output on 2 channel DAC module based on MCP4922 12 bit DAC device
// Hardware SPI version
// uses pin 13 (or 52) for SCK, pin 11 (or 51) for MOSI, pin 10 (or 53) for SS
// outputs both channels 0-5vdc in continous loop
// leftyretro 3/31/11
Lefty
I noticed someone posted something on SPI pins. Anyone care to elaborate a bit more on that? How does it affect the shields and/or addons for uno vs mega? Thanks.
From experience, the SPI pins communicate with the ethernet shield and SD cards... And those are quite important.
Many board get the SPI signals from the ISP header and I think this is the same on both boards.
Rob